Interesting sidelight on the wealth-gap, but no fresh insights.
Young Jamie Johnson of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune is clearly feeling uncomfortable in his skin, and the film mostly reflects his own strongly-personalised reaction in the form of unfocused goodwill towards the massed ranks that he sees as victims of the system.
We may remember Scott Fitzgerald noting that 'the rich are different from you and me'. Some of them certainly are. With his highly-placed contacts, Jamie is able to gatecrash an exclusive wealth-management conference whose host actually brags about his skill at keeping out gatecrashers!
Oddest of all is Jamie's father, who had once made an anti-apartheid film about the firm's employment practices in South Africa - a bit too close to home for some of the family, who silenced him, and apparently neutered him, he has so little to say for himself.
Another tycoon's grandson has decided to give away half his fortune to charity, and I can only think of a thousand chuckling villains hiding behind the dazzling raiment of non-profit and pro bono. (More surprisingly, Warren Buffett, who ought to know better, is planning the same thing.) And Nobel-Prizewinning economist Milton Friedman gets so incensed at Jamie's ludicrous claim that he "certainly wouldn't advocate socialism" that he throws him out.
Quite a few blacks, representing the underclass, are asked for their views, but no great nuggets of wisdom are forthcoming. A jolly cab-driver declares that his family is rich in kindness, if not money. An appealing philosophy, but cab-drivers' wisdom is not something you can re-build the world on. South Chicagoans don't like the new gentrification that may drive them out. But at that rate, Wall Street would still be an Indian settlement. However, the Hurricane Katrina story could be interpreted as a trigger for revolution, with New Orleans' poorest being left to their own devices, though it was only the staggering inadequacy of Bush Junior, rather than any genocidal policy, that led to this outrage.
One interesting theme is fear. Buffett's grand-daughter believes that the more obsessive cases of greed are often rooted in fear of losing it all and sliding back to one's humble beginnings. To me that sounds more like the old self-made tycoons, who hated to part with a dime, than with the fourth or fifth generationers we see here.
"Have a little bit of guilt. And a little bit of pride." says one big inheritor, probably trying to make himself feel better.
I'd say adopt the second statement, and ditch the first.
Young Jamie Johnson of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune is clearly feeling uncomfortable in his skin, and the film mostly reflects his own strongly-personalised reaction in the form of unfocused goodwill towards the massed ranks that he sees as victims of the system.
We may remember Scott Fitzgerald noting that 'the rich are different from you and me'. Some of them certainly are. With his highly-placed contacts, Jamie is able to gatecrash an exclusive wealth-management conference whose host actually brags about his skill at keeping out gatecrashers!
Oddest of all is Jamie's father, who had once made an anti-apartheid film about the firm's employment practices in South Africa - a bit too close to home for some of the family, who silenced him, and apparently neutered him, he has so little to say for himself.
Another tycoon's grandson has decided to give away half his fortune to charity, and I can only think of a thousand chuckling villains hiding behind the dazzling raiment of non-profit and pro bono. (More surprisingly, Warren Buffett, who ought to know better, is planning the same thing.) And Nobel-Prizewinning economist Milton Friedman gets so incensed at Jamie's ludicrous claim that he "certainly wouldn't advocate socialism" that he throws him out.
Quite a few blacks, representing the underclass, are asked for their views, but no great nuggets of wisdom are forthcoming. A jolly cab-driver declares that his family is rich in kindness, if not money. An appealing philosophy, but cab-drivers' wisdom is not something you can re-build the world on. South Chicagoans don't like the new gentrification that may drive them out. But at that rate, Wall Street would still be an Indian settlement. However, the Hurricane Katrina story could be interpreted as a trigger for revolution, with New Orleans' poorest being left to their own devices, though it was only the staggering inadequacy of Bush Junior, rather than any genocidal policy, that led to this outrage.
One interesting theme is fear. Buffett's grand-daughter believes that the more obsessive cases of greed are often rooted in fear of losing it all and sliding back to one's humble beginnings. To me that sounds more like the old self-made tycoons, who hated to part with a dime, than with the fourth or fifth generationers we see here.
"Have a little bit of guilt. And a little bit of pride." says one big inheritor, probably trying to make himself feel better.
I'd say adopt the second statement, and ditch the first.